


Tell Me I'm Okay

by LilacSolanum



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: Aftran nothlits into something not-whale, Cassie is a good mom, Cassie's gentle sass, F/F, F/M, Multi, missing scenes from canon, teens trynna be teens but failing at it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-11
Updated: 2017-07-11
Packaged: 2018-11-30 17:46:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 7
Words: 20,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11468535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LilacSolanum/pseuds/LilacSolanum
Summary: An exploration of Cassie's increasingly complex relationship with her teammates, framed by her increasingly stable relationship with Aftran.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Poetry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poetry/gifts).



> My fic for the Sharing Exchange is fashionably late because I'm extra. Thank you so much to [Cavatica](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Cavatica/) for her amazing beta work, which included: calling me out on a rushed epilogue, finding all the half-assed parts I tried to hide, and encouraging better, stronger dick jokes. They are amazing and everyone should read their fic.

“We made the right decision,” Jake said. “Better than the last time we used the blue box.”

“Would have been hard to do any worse,” Marco said. “Anyway. Visser Three will never find Aftran now.”

On Aftran’s second day out of the Yeerk pool, everyone in the group was well enough for a short meeting. We all agreed that we couldn’t let Aftran die. It was Jake who thought of the way to save her.

He suggested that we give her the power to morph, on the condition that she choose one morph and stay in it forever. It was just safer that way. For everyone. Like I said, the decision was unanimous.

Animorphs #29, The Sickness

 

“She should be human,” I said, staring at all my pale and exhausted comrades. Aftran was in a bowl, looking unceremonious and small. She had been with me, but when everyone found out, Marco left the barn to puke. I know he had fallen ill next-to-last and was still in the throes of the _yamphut_ , but honestly? My mom always told me if I didn’t have anything nice to say, then I shouldn’t say anything at all. So what I did, when he came back in, was hand him a glass of water and rub his back. What I didn’t do was call him a drama queen.

We were in the barn at 2 AM, like we were so often these days. Not everyone was doing so great, but Rachel and Jake were okay. Tobias was still really sick and kept going in and out of consciousness. He wasn’t really at the meeting as much as he was in a cage in the barn. Ax was still resting and recovering. Aftran said he’d need to sleep for at least six more hours.

“Human is the only thing she _can’t_ be,” said Marco. He was openly leaning against a wall, a piece of weakness I’ve rarely seen from him, even after the most bone-weary and soul-scathing battles. Still, his tone was final and firm. “Cassie, think.”

I balled my fists up, my arms tight against my body. “I have,” I said. “She could live with me. If I told my parents that she needed a place to stay, they would take her in.”

Rachel met my eyes and nodded, just slightly, just enough so I could see. I knew what she meant. ‘I have your back.’ I gave her a small smile in return. My sister from my mom’s first marriage has a phrase she uses a lot, ride-or-die, um, “broad,” and that’s Rachel. She supported me without question.

Marco laughed darkly, and pushed himself to sit up straight. “Sure, Ma and Pa might take in the wayward lamb, but eventually, they’re going to start asking questions. Should we contact any relatives? Where are her parents, exactly? Should we contact CPS? Hey, hon, Little Orphan Yeerkie, what’s your social security number?”

I tightened my fists, my nails digging into my skin. “She can’t be an animal!” I said. “That’s too sad, too lonely. Even if she became a, a pet, or something, she’d still be so isolated. If Tobias was lucid, he would agree.”

“Tobias is Tobias,” said Marco, darkly. “A Yeerk is no Tobias.”

“She saved Ax’s life!” I said, almost yelling. A deer startled. Jake shushed me, harshly, pointing toward my house. I took a deep breath, then continued in a harsh whisper. “This is what we did to — to punish someone else. Made him an animal and left him all alone. It’s not right for her!”

“She’s a Yeerk!” Marco shot back, matching my tone. “You’re not listening. You don’t want to listen. You just want to dance in a field of daisies, pretending that things just work themselves out because Cassie thinks it’s only fair! Well, in the reality _I_ live in, a human who knows each and every one of our secrets just popping up in the middle of this Yeerk-infested town is a reason to fucking worry. She goes animal, or she starves.”

“Marco, stop being an asshole,” said Rachel, glaring at him. He shrugged and leaned against the wall again, closing his eyes. Jake sighed.

“He has a point,” said Jake quietly. “We can’t just add a new person into society.”

I suddenly realized how hard I was breathing. I relaxed my fists, and then I looked at the empty stall to my left. I pressed my lips together, staring at the wood grain. It was so detailed, so accurate. It was easy to forget it was all just a hologram.

I turned to the group and sighed heavily. I was incredibly glad Marco was still sick and wasn’t as observant as usual. The sigh was maybe a little too loud, and I was maybe capitulating a little too quickly. I had gotten good at lying through the war, but I still wasn’t exactly John Lithgow. Rachel narrowed her eyes at me. She knew me the best, and she knew when I was acting. I ignored her.

“Fine,” I said, throwing my hands up in the air. “Fine! She can become an animal. It’s still better than being a Yeerk.”

“You would know,” sneered Marco.

“Marco,” warned Jake sharply.

“It’s okay, Jake,” I said, keeping my shoulders back, “I’m not ashamed.”

<Cassie’s a Yeerk?> asked Tobias. Rachel looked over at the cage and made a calming shushing noise, gently scratching the place between his eyes.

“Probably,” said Marco.

“Do you _want_ me to fuck you up?” asked Rachel. Her interactions with Marco always straddled the line between playful and truly threatening, but this time, it was clear she was actually upset.

“Guys, stop,” said Jake, packing as much disappointment into the two small word as he possibly could. He closed his eyes and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. I knew exactly what he was thinking — we were in no position, as a group, to have a calm discussion. He was going to make a final call in about thirty seconds. I made eye contact with Rachel and mouthed ‘stay.’ She nodded at me, still comforting Tobias.

“Alright,” said Jake, dropping his hand to his side and straightening his shoulders. “Marco’s right, Cassie. I’m sorry, but he is. It’s just too complicated to turn her into a human, and it’s also a huge liability. She has to become an animal. That’s the way it is.” He softened his tone and looked right at me. “She can choose, though, and we’ll make it happen. No matter what she wants, no matter where that is.”

“Will we,” said Marco dryly.

“Anyone who isn’t a complete dick will,” said Rachel.

“Well,” said Marco, “Then wrap me in a Trojan and call me eight inches long.”

<You wear a morphing suit, and I’m a bird. I see your dick every day and that’s a major exaggeration,> said Tobias, as sharp as anything. Rachel started laughing.

“Alright,” said Jake, quickly putting his body between Marco and Rachel before Marco could retort. “Enough. Meeting’s over. Cassie will talk to Aftran.” He looked down at Marco, who had closed his eyes as soon as Jake got in front of him. “Come on, man. Let’s get going.”

“Yeah, fine,” he said brusquely. “Just give me a minute.”

Jake gave him a stern look. “You don’t have to fly this time, alright? Just be a flea. I’ll get you home.” He held a hand out to Marco. “We gotta go.”

Marco opened his eyes and glared at Jake for a moment. Then, he sighed and took Jake’s hand in his. Jake pulled him up. “When I’m less exhausted, I’m giving you shit for treating my like a kid,” he said.

“Raincheck on the verbal abuse?” asked Jake.

“Definitely,” said Marco.

They left a few minutes after. Rachel made a show of sitting and talking to Tobias, acting like the concerned girlfriend, but Tobias was talking about clouds moving too fast or something. I went over to the bowl Aftran was in.

“Rachel, do you mind?” I asked, indicating the Yeerk.

Rachel blinked and shivered a little. Then, she shook her head vigorously, as if she were shaking away some bad thoughts. “You know what? I’m dating a delirious bird. Who cares about anything anymore.”

<I’m a good bird,> said Tobias, completely out of it again.

“You totally are, babe,” said Rachel.

“Okay,” I said, bringing Aftran to my ear. “Erek, drop the hologram.”

The empty stall to my left flickered and revealed a sleeping Ax and a dog-shaped android. Rachel gasped softly.

“We forgot about Erek,” she said.

“You all forgot about Erek,” I said, nodding.

“I’ve been through worse,” said Erek lightly.

“So,” I said, spinning toward the Chee. “Would you be willing to forge a new identity for Aftran?”

“I would be,” said Erek cheerfully.

<Whoooooa, there’s Ax-man!> said Tobias.

 

—

 

Aftran and I spent the night together, sharing my body, my family, my nightly rituals. The private things I did alone in my bedroom. I never told anyone about that. I don’t think they would understand. Honestly, I might not completely understand, either.

Rachel, Erek, Aftran, and I had worked out the plan between the four of us (with occasional and illuminating commentary from Tobias). Aftran would acquire a humpback whale. It was a tricky enough form to seem convincing, like we really did let Aftran choose. It was going to be a pretty bit of maneuvering to accomplish, but doable. Humpback whales like to play on the surface, so if you’re patient enough, you can eventually spot one. It took a few hours with the whole group to help Aftran to acquire one.

Ax and I were chosen to sit and wait for Aftran to complete the transformation. I was there because Aftran was my friend. Ax was there allegedly to keep the time, but I knew the truth. He was there to make sure that I didn’t do anything, well, exactly like the thing I had planned.

He barely spoke to us as we flew out to the ocean. He and I were in our chosen raptor morphs, and Aftran was a kestrel. It was all we had in the barn at the time. Marco hadn’t wanted her to morph a bird at all, but even he admitted she’d have a tough time acquiring anything else without another sentient being’s help. If Aftran flew away from us to try and have a different fate, she’d just, you know. Demorph and sort of just stay there until she dried out or starved. Besides, the other option was to have her travel inside of me, which Ax would not allow.

He’d been incredibly on edge since his sickness. At least, I think he was on edge. It was always hard to tell with Ax. He was definitely more withdrawn than usual. Spending time with the Yeerk that infested him and the “doctor” that had facilitated the situation probably wasn’t his ideal evening, _and_ he was missing _Ally McBeal_. I felt bad, but not too bad. I’d done what I needed to do to save my patient. He’d get over it.

We demorphed on an island. Ax stood sentry on the shore, his arms crossed over his chest. He’d been learning human body language from TV, and he only did it if he very purposefully wanted us to know what he was feeling. I didn’t say a word to him. I just swam out to the ocean with Aftran in my hand. I slowly morphed dolphin as I went, carefully controlling the morph to keep track of Aftran.

Soon, she was whale, and I was dolphin. We didn’t say much to each other. There would be time to talk later.

Ax can see a lot, but I was pretty sure he could see no further under the surface of the water than a human. At least, that was my theory. If I was wrong, I’d be in a whole lot of trouble.

We switched Rachel out for Aftran somewhere around the first hour mark. We’d made sure Rachel’d acquired the same whale.

Ax didn’t suspect a thing, because why would he? According to Ax, Yeerks deserved no mercy. Even this Yeerk, who had done so much for us, and who had assisted in saving his life. He saw my sympathy for Aftran as a perversion, something that was terrible and unique only to me. It made me feel bad, sure, but I was used to it. Ax hadn’t treated me the same ever since I met Aftran. It would never occur to him that Rachel would help me save Aftran from a life of loneliness. The idea would simply never pop into his brain.

We barely spoke for the two hours, even though Aftran kept shouting updates on how much fun she was having. I’d tried, once or twice, to start some conversation, but Ax had absolutely no interest. At least he’d dropped his arms to his side.

“Aftran” had been in morph for almost an hour and forty-five minutes. Rachel made a show of breaching. I nudged Ax, half heartedly trying to talk again. “She looks really happy,” I said.

<It is fun to be a cetacean,> said Ax mildly. I looked down at my hands, focusing on a particular mole I had next to my thumb. Sometimes, if I made myself really blank, as if I were meditating, I could feel impressions of Ax’s emotions in his thought-speak. It was hard to do, and I wondered if I was conflating my own assumptions about his emotions with actually picking up on something, but I wanted to try.

“I think she’s going to really enjoy herself,” I said, “listening” as hard as I could to Ax. “It would be so freeing, wouldn’t it? Living as the Queen of the ocean, completely in charge, doing whatever you want every single day. No responsibilities to worry about at all. Just… swimming. Swimming, and jumping, and playing.”

<I dislike the ocean,> said Ax, suddenly, as if he had rehearsed the response. I think I felt some sort of fear from him, and definitely some anger. I broke away from my trance and stared at him.

It’s hard to read an alien. There are so many innate social cues I can pick up from everyone else and I simply can’t do that with Ax. He held his tail blade in such particular positions, always lowering it or adjusting the curve, and I knew it must mean something. I would ask him, but he was still cagey about his Andalite experiences. I think it was a mix of guilt over his constantly disobeying Seerow’s Kindness mixed with his homesickness. Right now, his blade was low, and nearly curved into itself like a circle. Something about it spoke of shame to me, like a dog’s tail tucked between its legs.

“Are you okay with this?” I asked, my voice low.

Ax looked at me with a single stalk-eye. <It does not matter,> he said. <It is done.>

I shook off his mood, promising myself to explore it later. I ran to the edge of the tiny island we were on, my arms all outstretched like a child. I screamed “Aftran, you’re free!”

I heard the laughter in my head. I laughed along with her. Ax was already morphing to owl, ready to leave. Rachel jumped above the water, spinning wildly, her whale-mouth open in a grin.

Ax flew off. I watched him for a while, my face tilted upwards in the warm California summer, moonlight shining on my skin.

<Okay,> said Tobias’s voice. <He’s gone.>

Tobias had been our lookout, an extra bit of security against Ax’s vigilant stalk eyes. It was easy to get him on board. He was good at empathizing with other aliens, even Yeerks. Besides, he knew more than anyone the loneliness of a _nothlit._ If we had never found Ax, we would have eventually lost Tobias. We had talked about Aftran becoming a bird and staying with them, but she was in my head at the time, and she shared her fears with me. Tobias was suited for a lonely life, and Ax was forced into it. Aftran’s situation was different, and she _needed_ to be surrounded by other sentient minds. I understood completely.

I watched as Rachel came terrifyingly close to shore for a whale, all while turning soft and pink. Aftran emerged as a kestrel from a tree, hidden in a spot Tobias had smugly confirmed Ax’s stalk eye vision couldn’t see.

<Okay, kids,> said Tobias. <Are we ready for part two?>

“Always,” said Rachel, looking obnoxiously perfect for someone who had crawled soaking wet across a sandy island while her body shook off the last vestiges of a whale form.

 

—

 

Finding a home for Aftran was a tricky bit of business. She couldn’t be close to a city, that was obvious. The Sharing chapters were opening up everywhere there was a significant population of people they could exploit. We didn’t want to toss her smack-dab in the middle of a small town, either. A young girl can’t just appear in the middle of a population of five thousand and go ignored, especially with the genetic sampling we managed to scrape up for Aftran’s human morph. She was going to be a mix of me, Rachel, and Mr. Tidwell. Only one of these people were white, and I know exactly how much of a problem that would be in a rural area. Whenever I’d go with my dad out to the Dry Lands to pick up a rescue, they would look at us like the circus just arrived, like they’d never seen such a novelty. I didn’t really want that to be Aftran’s whole life.

The solution ended up being pretty simple. We were going to take Aftran to Las Vegas. Specifically, The Strip.

According to Erek, there were only a handful of controllers in Las Vegas. A group of young, hot Vegas employees had a small Pool set up in The Venetian and called themselves The Honeypot. Their job was to try and influential people who came to The Strip, typically by seducing them. They were an insular, elite group, and rarely took in new members. Other than that, the Yeerks left Vegas alone. It was both too touristy and too self-contained. A Vegas performer could do well on The Strip and have power in town, but they weren’t always beloved elsewhere. When it came to host bodies for host bodies’ sake, the majority of people on The Strip were merely passing through, and no Yeerk wanted to get stranded in Wisconsin without access to Kandrona. As long as you knew who was in The Honeypot and avoided them at all costs, you could easily live a Yeerk-free life in Vegas.

To make things even better, there was a Chee in Vegas. She was posing as a trust fund kid, and lived in a condo _on_ The Strip. Like, directly on Las Vegas boulevard. I didn’t even want to think about how much she paid for that. Her name was Delia. Aftran would live with her as an added bit of protection. While Delia couldn’t do much to stop something from happening, she could at least get the message to Erek.

The Chee got Aftran a legal and valid identity with just a few waves of their hands. Her official name was Anna Tran. It was done.

We sat together in Delia’s fancy condo, holding hands and watching _Cheers_ reruns while an egg timer counted down the loss of Aftran’s true form. As the minutes ticked away, I could feel her pulse quicken. I squeezed her hand and turned toward her. “If you want to change your mind, that’s okay. Erek might be a little mad, but he’s a bazillion years old. He’ll probably be really mature about it.”

Aftran shook her head, her lips pressed closely together. They were my lips, which was a little freaky, but it was easy not to think about. She also got my skin tone and hip shape. I couldn’t say why, but I was really glad she was mostly Rachel and Mr. Tidwell. Too much more of me in Aftran would have been way too disturbing.

“No,” she said. “I’m — I’m excited, and I think this is a good thing. I’m so happy you found a way for this to happen. The ocean is so much more familiar to me than this world of lights, but I would have been …”

“Alone,” I finished.

“Alone,” said Aftran. “This is a gift. I get to experience the universe with all it has, and I don’t have to imprison someone to do it. I wish we could share this with The Empire.”

“I do, too,” I said quietly. Aftran looked at me, and smiled.

“I know you do,” she said. “And if anyone can make the Council of Thirteen and the Andalites listen and work it out, it’s you, Cassie.”

I wasn’t entirely sure what the Council of Thirteen was, but it wasn’t important. “Then why are you so nervous?”

Aftran’s smile faded. “Like I said, I’m excited, but excited isn’t always good. I’m anxious and so, so scared. If I’m found out —”

“You won’t be,” I said, determined.

“But if —”

“You won’t be.”

Aftran sighed and looked back at the television screen. “Besides, this is permanent. There are aspects of my Yeerk life I _liked,_ you know. Yeah, being a human is great. I’ll have eyes and a voice and, god, hair to play with —” she paused and grabbed her hair in a fist, making it into a crude ponytail. I laughed. Aftran had done, like, six different things with her hair since she’d morphed. She was obsessed with hairstyles. When I told her she could go to beauty school and learn how to style hair as a profession, her eyes had gone as wide as saucers.

She dropped her hand, her black hair tangling wildly across her face. “It’s just so final. All of this. When I kept slaves, I could always leave them, and soak up Kandrona with my brothers and sisters in the pool. Now? This is it for me. I’m human. It’s better than taking slaves, but it’s not as good as staying myself.”

We both glanced at the egg timer, in perfect synch. She was two minutes away from becoming a _nothlit._

I knew, intimately and fully, exactly how large the universe was. I had met aliens, _been_ aliens, and even been to other planets. I was sure there was some species out there that was more glamorous than being human. Some alien form with a brand new sense, like Ax experienced with taste, something wild and unimaginable that this species took for granted but would change my life entirely. Maybe there was a species that could hold all memories inside them, all at once, and draw upon anything and everything at a moment’s notice. Maybe there was a species that was graceful and beautiful and so much more stunning than my regular human form. Maybe there was a species that had all the best parts of my favorite morphs, a species that could fly _and_ run free _and_ have thumbs. I could see myself finding an alien, and wanting to be that alien.

Would I actually give up my true form, though? Could I become an alien that was so large I couldn’t fit in my own home, even if that alien could see through walls? Could I give up shoving a handful of Skittles in my mouth, even if I found a form that needed no sustenance or sleep? Could I give up the simple dusty yellow of dandelions, even if a new morph gave me more colors? I don’t think I could.

Suddenly, all my scheming and manipulating felt stupid and idealistic and wrong. This wasn’t the best thing for her. This wasn’t fair to ask of anyone.

“Morph back,” I said, pleading and small. “We’ll figure it out.”

Aftran brought her knees up to her chest, wrapped her arms around them, and rested her chin on her knees. “I don’t want to. I want to, but I don’t want to. I want this, but I don’t want this.” She buried her face in her skirt. “I’m jealous of Illim and Tidwell,” she said, her words muffled.

Thirty seconds.

“I am too,” I said, quietly. “I wish you could just live in me.”

The egg timer went off.

Sam and Diane continued to banter on the screen while Aftran and I cried, holding each other with just our arms, which felt thick and blocky and not enough. After the intimacy we had once known, arms were a wall, and skin a fortress.

 

—

 

It would still be really, really dangerous for me to go visit her. It’s not like I could just ask my parents to drop me off at Aftran’s house. If I wanted to see her, I’d have to go as a bird, and even then it’s a very long trip. It’d be like morphing wolf back at the North Pole, over and over, with no place to take a break. Nothing about a trip to see Aftran was prudent. We got there in the first place because Erek turned into Mr. King and drove us, which took nearly eight hours. When we said goodbye, it was going to be a pretty final goodbye.

I stood outside Erek’s car with Aftran, admiring her in the light. She’d caught Tidwell’s deep brown eyes, which were sort of unsettling on him, but were beautiful on her, like she held galaxies inside. I felt a strange sort of urge to kiss her, almost. Not like I kissed Jake, but a chaste sort of kiss. A kiss like they do in the European movies my mom watches sometimes. A friend kiss. A goodbye kiss.

We didn’t kiss, though. We stood with our hands in one anothers’, providing comfort and sureness. I could have stood there forever, but I had to get back. Rachel could only cover for me for so long. Seriously, I owe that girl my life so many times over, I’m probably going to get reincarnated as her dog or something.

So we said goodbye, a final-but-not-final farewell. We didn’t say much. We’d said all we needed to say, when I slept with her in my head the nights before Vegas, and we shared one dream. We hugged. I slid into the car, and Erek drove away.

I wondered if I could convince my parents to go to Vegas for the next family trip.


	2. Chapter 2

“She’s your mother!” Cassie exploded. “She’s not ‘Visser One.’ She’s your mother! Is everyone just going to let this happen?”

Jake sent her a cold look. “This is not the time, Cassie.”

“When is it going to be the time? When Marco’s mind is screwed up forever by this? He’s in denial. This is his mother, for God’s sake.”

Jake said nothing. No one said anything. Cassie’s words just hung in the air.

“Go on, Marco,” Jake said finally.

Marco, Animorphs #30, The Reunion

 

Everyone else left, one by one, to take their places. We were doing it. We were acting out Marco’s awful, brilliant plan, pushing forward because we had to, because the Earth was more important than a one woman _who could be saved_. Jake and I lingered behind. I knew he wanted to talk to me about my outburst, and somehow soothe me just enough to get through the next few hours.

I took a deep breath, and turned to face him.

I almost gasped when I saw him. His face was red and twisted, and he was breathing heavily. He wasn’t crying, not exactly, but he was close to it, and trying to hold back the tears.

“Eva was my mom’s best friend,” he said, cracking and choked. “She taught me how to ride a bike.”

“Jake,” I said, because there was nothing else to say. I never thought about his relationship to Eva before. I knew he and Marco had known each other for forever, but I never asked how. I flung myself forward, and gathered Jake in my arms. He allowed me to hug him for a moment, just a moment, and then he pushed me away. He held onto my upper arms and looked directly into my eyes. His tears were completely gone, now. He’d kept them down.

“Cassie, you have to understand,” said Jake. “He’s already mourned his mom. We both did. My whole family did. Seeing her back, it’s —” he paused, and I knew he was swallowing down tears again. “It’s not okay,” he said, finally. “It’s just not okay.”

I shook my head. “Jake, you can’t convince me this is fine. There is no angle, no world, no conversation that makes any of this right.”

Jake nodded slowly, as if taking in my words and processing them. He pulled away from me, walking toward a hayloft and taking out a piece of straw. He started folding it in half, then folding it in half again, all method and math. “You know, he stayed with us after Eva died. For a long, long time. Months. So long that he doesn’t like sleeping at my house anymore. He always goes home, no matter how late it is. That entire time, I didn’t see him cry.” He looked over at me and smiled, the slow, sheepish smile that always made my heart flutter. “And not like me now. Not, like, really obviously about to cry.”

I laughed, just a little, even if it wasn’t a joke, and it wasn’t funny. Jake looked back down at his straw.

“I was so, so relieved, the first time I saw him cry after his mom died,” Jake said. “I think, if it were any other person, it’d be the equivalent of seeing them laugh after a really big tragedy. Only with Marco, he laughs more when he’s empty. It’s the crying you need to watch out for.”

Jake set the straw down, and walked back over to me.

“Maybe he never cries again after this,” said Jake, and I could feel how much this weighed on him, feel how he was so, so sick inside. He saw what Marco could do, and he saw the outcome, but the boy that he only showed to me was screaming for him to stop this before it could go too far. “This is a war, and if it’s not this that hardens his shell, then it’s going to be something else. Maybe he ends up watching her die in some other way. Maybe she gives the order to infest his dad, just in case. Or worse of all, he could watch her kill one of us, knowing it’s his mom, knowing he could have gotten her when he had the chance. I’m letting him do this, fully aware of what will happen to him, because it’s going to happen one way or another. Okay? It’s a shit situation, and there’s no outcome that’s good for anyone. So let him deal with Visser One like this. On his terms, and with a big, giant win for us. In a lot of ways, this is the best outcome.”

He looked at me then, with his eyes wet, and I felt myself understanding.

He showed me when he was a boy, and in return, I showed him when I was a warrior.

I swallowed.

I felt my eyes grow hot.

“You’re right,” I said, my voice thick and wet and alien.

He pressed me tightly to him, and I cried. I cried for Marco, for Marco’s father. For poor Eva, caged inside herself. I cried for us. I cried for all of us.

We kissed each other when we were ready, when my tears had subsided and when he could feel again. We did this before missions, if we had time. After the close call with the Howlers, we always made sure we got kissing in _before_ we thought one of us was dead.

He guided me toward an empty stall, then continued to kiss me. He placed his hands on waist, then my thighs, and then they were on my breasts. He’d just started doing that a few weeks ago. I didn’t really mind it, but it wasn’t that great, either. It was always over the shirt. He’d just sort of cup his hands around them, like he was protecting them from something, and then that’d be it. I always wanted him to do more, but I was too embarrassed to ask for it.

So, I decided not to exactly __ask_ _ for anything. We still had a good ten minutes before we had to leave, and I still felt the weight of our decision sinking inside me. I kissed him, and then pulled away. I pulled my shirt up, bunching it up above my breasts. I kept it there with one hand, and with the other, I took one of his wrists and guided it toward my chest. I was still wearing my bra, of course, but it was still so much closer, so much more intimate than we’d ever been. I locked my eyes in with his.

I wanted closeness. I wanted comfort. I wanted an eye in the storm, a light at the end of the tunnel, a balm in Gilead. I wanted touch and skin and vulnerability. I wanted something secret and sacred, something just for us, something I could hold onto with both hands and use to prop myself up.

He looked at me, nervous and quickly growing bright red. I was growing hot in turn. I dropped my shirt.

“Do you, um. Do you not want to . . .”

“No! No,” he said, shaking his head so hard some of his hair fell in his eyes. He brushed it aside so quickly it was like he was slapping away a bug. I would have giggled if I wasn’t so embarrassed. “I mean, yes. Yes, to wanting to. But maybe not right now? I mean, we don’t have a lot of time …”

“I didn’t mean to, you know. Um. You know.” I wanted to to sink into the floor and die. Disappear, completely. I could, maybe. Morph flea, but just the size of it, like the Helmacrons all over again. I’m normally good at soothing awkward scenes, but not this one. This wasn’t something I was really comfortable with, not yet.

Jake took a deep breath, and took my hands in his. “I just, um. I sort of feel like, like whenever we connect like this, whenever we start to take some kind of next step, it’s because one of us is upset.”

I felt my whole body relax. I knew, suddenly, where he was going. I smiled at him, open and honest. I think I even felt a little relieved. “You want us to be more intimate because of something joyful,” I said, “Not because of yet another bad day in the war.”

He grabbed the back of his neck and grinned sheepishly. He nodded. “Exactly.” He paused, and shifted uncomfortably on the bed. “I’m sorry if that’s lame.”

“It’s not lame,” I said.

“I kind of feel like I’m being the girl right now,” he said, laughing a little.

“Because girls are supposed to be prudes?” I said, looking pointedly at his crotch. “I don’t want to embarrass you or anything, but I don’t think you’re having super prudish thoughts right now.”

I thought I had already seen Jake at maximum blush today, but now, he somehow turned an even deeper red. He stood up and walked to the corner of the room, and I couldn’t help but giggle.

Deep inside, I knew it was weird that we were kissing and laughing. I felt like we were slapping a nice, expensive blanket on an old and grungy couch. We couldn’t hide how ugly the furniture was, no matter how we tried, but we needed to do was _something_.

Ten minutes later, we were in the air, off to commit matricide.

 

———

 

I waited a week to visited Marco after the altercation with Visser One. I knew that he didn’t really want to see me. Even Jake had sort of hinted that me trying to talk to him wouldn’t be the best idea. I was good at comforting the others, I knew that, and I could be good at comforting Marco if he would let me. He never would. He saw me as little more than an overly nurturing busybody, someone who needed to drip pity on him and hold him in order to make myself feel better about _his_ situation. I’m sure that’s how he and his dad were treated when they lost Eva so many years back. Aunts and uncles, siblings and children, all clamoring to calm themselves by watching the immediate family members mourn, their faces perfectly poised with secondhand grief. I’d seen some of that, when my grandma died. I was really young, and I didn’t know her all that well, but I watched how everyone treated my mom. It was like her strength and her grace was a gift specifically for them. A spectacle put on, just to make them feel better.

That’s not what I wanted to get from Marco. That is never, ever what I wanted from him. I wanted him to open up, and to bleed out a little of the poison that was inside. I knew he wouldn’t, knew he’d resist, but I couldn’t stop myself from trying. It wasn’t right, to just shut down and lock up everything. He was going to try and deal with all of this on his own, and there was no way any one person could do that.

Besides, in the end, I had done nothing to stop it. His mother’s prison-body had fallen from that cliff. Rachel told all of us that there were no scorch marks, but the chances were still so, so slim.

Maybe, on some level, I was visiting Marco for myself after all, but it was so much more than that. He needed to share his burden.

I told Peter that I had some homework for Marco. He let me in, looking stressed and slightly ill himself. I thought about how hard it must be for him to see Marco like this. Peter seemed like a simple kind of guy. He probably wanted the same thing for breakfast, ordered the same entree from the same three restaurants, and went to bed at exactly ten o’clock PM. I got that sort of feeling from him. He reminded me a little of Tobias. He probably had never anticipated being a single dad, nevermind a single dad with a sick kid. He must be spiraling.

I made a note to tell him that I was jealous of how comfortable Marco looked, and laugh about how my parents still make me work at the farm, even if I was sick. They actually do, sometimes, if they think I was exaggerating illness to stay home from school (which was only sometimes!) It might make him feel better, maybe make him feel like he was a good father.

Marco’s room was dark. He only had one window in his room, and the blinds were down. He’d also hung a blanket over the window with thumbtacks and duct tape. I wondered why he didn’t just install curtains, but two guys living in a house alone probably don’t worry too much about curtains. It was sort of sad, but kind of funny too. The sort of thing Marco might comment on. I gestured toward the window, and did my best to make a Marco kind of joke. “Are those curtains from the new Macy’s collection?” I said. “Wait. Macy’s sells curtains, right?”

Marco sat up in his bed, very slowly. “Why are you here?”

His tone was harsh and flat. I felt slightly stung, but I swallowed it. “I have history notes,” I said. There was a TV set above his dresser that was playing the sci-fi channel, except the sound was off. Some black and white movie flickered across the room, casting everything in gray. It was creepy.

“Leave them,” he said. He looked me up and down, as if searching me for something, then fell back into his bed. He pulled the covers over himself and turned toward his wall. The message was beyond clear, but I didn’t give up so easy.

I sat down at his desk chair and stared up at the silent television. “What are you watching?” I asked.

“My mother falling to her death every time I close my eyes,” he said blandly, his voice coming out muffled underneath the blankets. “ __The Day The Earth Stood Still_ _ is playing on the television.”

I suppressed a sigh. I looked at Marco’s desk, which was cluttered with his school books, notes from the other Animorphs, and the general detritus that characterized Marco’s life. There was an empty glass bottle peeking out from under his bed. I leaned over and picked it up. It was rum.

I looked at him with wide eyes, more shocked than I should be. “What is this?” I asked.

Marco angrily emerged from his blankets, then rolled his eyes. “I learned it from watching you,” he said.

“What if your dad found out?” I asked. “You’d be grounded for months! We can’t have that!”

Marco barked a laugh, bitter and loud. “Relax. My dad lets me have a beer at dinner. The Bacardi, that was my mom’s. Dad never liked rum. He’ll never notice, or care. I snuck that out for the winter formal. You know, the one where Ax went full patient zero and shared with us the week-long Andalite Vom Fest? I had a flask. The whole time. I had such plans. We were gonna puke, but have way more fun doing it.”

I put the bottle back behind the monitor, feeling both too still and yet, full of static. I didn’t have any interest in drinking, but my parents have definitely talked to me about it. The night before that same dance, they told me they’d be disappointed if I ever got drunk, but just in case, please know that I could always call them, no matter what, and to never drink anything someone else has opened. I was kind of offended when they told me that, like, who do you think I am? Me? Cassie? Drinking? But now I see that they had a point. I guess sneaking alcohol is a thing teenagers are __supposed_ _ to do. They were supposed to get bold and curious and drink together. That was a perfectly normal part of life.

I wondered what happened to the rum. I had a feeling it was long gone. Maybe teenagers were supposed to drink, but they weren’t supposed to drink alone in dark bedrooms, depressed and locked up inside. That was wrong.

Of all the things I watched happening to us, to my friends, to me, drinking was the least of them. Yet, it somehow wasn’t. I imagined, briefly, a life where we never had to worry about morphing limits and illnesses at that dance. Marco would have flashed the flask at us with a mischievous grin. I bet everyone but myself would have had some. Even Jake, but only because Marco would have pressured him. Maybe they would have had a lot. Maybe I would have had to call my parents after all, but not because of me.

This was all so, so wrong.

I stood up. I wasn’t giving up on him, not yet, but Marco had turned toward the wall again. He was not in the right place for healing.

I had to know before I left. “Hey, Marco?” I asked.

He didn’t answer.

“Have you cried yet?”

“Fuck off, Cassie,” he said.


	3. Chapter 3

I wanted to say a lot.

Like how they’d saved my family.

My sanity. “Thanks,” I said.

“Hey, don’t mention it,” Rachel said fliply. “We needed a vacation, anyway.”

<We have spent time exploring that decrepit, architectural structure riddled with rodents and assorted wildlife,> Ax said, turning an eye stalk toward the abandoned hunting lodge across the lake. <We discovered several extremely large spiders.>

“And rats. Don’t leave out the rats,” Cassie said with a laugh.

<Personally, I had fun,> Tobias offered.

“That’s because you got to eat like a pig,” Rachel said.

\- Jake, Animorphs #31, The Conspiracy

 

I’m a farm girl who was raised in muck and mire. My definition of gross is pretty skewed compared to most people. Like, I’m aware I’m _weirdly_ comfortable with poop. Someone could give me a pile of manure and I’d just shrug and fertilize a garden. Yeah, it was waste, and it wasn’t clean, but was part of the whole Mother Earth process. Who cares about a little bit of poop? Who cares about a salivating dog or a little horse pee? That’s why God gave us showers.

So when I tell you that the abandoned lodge across the lake from Jake’s late great-grandfather was gross, you better believe that it was _super gross._ I could handle the dirt and grime a little more than everyone else, but when you combined the two inch thick layer of neglect with our morphing outfits? It was bad. Way bad. Everyone morphed, and then we tried to clean the house as best we could with our paws. Then, we all became animals that were good at killing rats. It felt like a senseless massacre, but Marco wouldn’t shut up about hantavirus. He went on and on about how we didn’t know which diseases we could and could not morph away anymore, as if the _amphut_ could happen again at any moment. Marco was great at seeing outcomes other people didn’t think about and that had saved our lives a lot, but lately? He was becoming more and more paranoid, and it could get exhausting. With our morphing ability, we were about as at risk for hantavirus as a hairbrush. At least Tobias had a nice time.

Rachel and I were currently sitting in some armchairs that we’d (hopefully) cleaned of all insects. Tobias was on look out, ready to alert us if — _when_ , had to be when — Tom came out to talk to his dad. Tobias and I had scouted out a couple of potential spots for a father-Yeerk heart to heart, and together we’d come up with a few plans to injure Tom. We were really hoping for the dock, which we could theoretically rip apart without Tom ever seeing a single animal, but we might not be so lucky. If Tom’s Yeerk took Steve out somewhere isolated at night, we would stage a coyote attack. It wasn’t ideal, but coyote attacks weren’t entirely unheard of, and it was better than nothing. If the Yeerk never brought Steve out, if it started to look like the Yeerk was using poison or trying to stage a public accident to keep his hands completely clean, then — well, I’d seen Marco and Rachel talking to Ax with grim faces, and I knew I didn’t want to hear the conversation.

In an effort to legitimize a coyote attack, Marco was out creating havoc and noise in morph. We’d all acquired the same coyote, and had agreed to take turns seeding some concern. My turn was next, which would mean leaving Rachel and Marco alone. That worried me a little. Rachel had been relentlessly torturing Marco with various spiders and snakes for the laugh, and while Marco liked being the butt of a joke just as much as he liked making them, Rachel was so bored that she was purposefully pushing the line. Of course, sending Rachel out alone could be a disaster, too. A bored Rachel was a volatile thing, and I was worried that she might actually jump out and scare Jake’s family or something. These weren’t the Berensons, and Rachel had no emotional ties to anyone but Jake’s immediate family. She might not hold back.

All of us were stuck in the world’s grimiest lodge with nothing to do. We were going to tear each other apart if Tom and Steve didn’t come out tonight. I really wish I’d figured out a way to bring some playing cards.

I was trying to keep Rachel entertained by playing playground clapping games. Rachel was always more popular than me, and had learned all these intricate little hand games from the other girls at school. When we became friends, she’d tried to teach them to me, but I never got the hang of it. Rachel had a memory for physical patterns that I just did not have. She could pick up choreography from watching a music video just once, and she could memorize gymnastics routines effortlessly, but me? Two left feet, _and_ two left hands.

I missed the part where I hit Rachel’s left hand with my right and fell backwards in defeat. “I’m hopeless,” I said.

“I know,” said Rachel, as exhausted with me as she ever was. “But I’ll never stop believing.” She twisted in her chair and looked toward Ax, who had been standing silent and contemplative since we got here. “Do you want to learn? Clapping games are a pretty important ritual for Earth girls.”

I suppressed a giggle. Rachel was right, really, but she didn’t need to make it sound so dramatic. Ax turned just one stalk eye toward us, his main eyes still locked on the door.

<The slapping of hands would not be pleasant for an Andalite. I have been horrified while watching you.>

Like with so much of what Ax said, his intent was inscrutable. I wasn’t sure if he was truly and actually horrified, or if he was only slightly offended and exaggerating, or if he wasn’t horrified at all and was just giving sarcasm a shot. I did notice his complete lack of human body language. I don’t think the others registered it as much, because it was natural to see someone shrug or nod, but I’d studied animal behavior enough to be in tune to it. Rarely did Ax look at us with just his stalk eyes these days. He knew we preferred his main eyes, and had adjusted himself accordingly. He would even twist his upper body to look at us with them, sometimes, which had to have been uncomfortable. There was no reason an Andalite needed to twist their back like that. Ax was probably the first to do it.

I frowned at him. Rachel just laughed. “Wow, why? Are your hands, like, super-sensitive or something?”

Ax’s tail blade drooped. <I will relieve Tobias,> he said. Again, I wasn’t sure if I was just imagining things or projecting, but I swear I could _feel_ his loneliness and pain, just for a second.

He left the room. One of his hooves briefly got stuck in a particularly rotted bit of floor. He forced it out and kept walking, as if nothing had happened, but there was no way that hadn’t upset him. I mean, his hooves were his _mouths._ Why wouldn’t he say anything about it?

I looked at Rachel. “I’m going to go talk to him,” I said.

Rachel flopped down on a dingy chair, waving me away with her hand as if she were a Queen dismissing me. She pulled it off, too. Rachel made that grungy La-Z-Boy chair look like a jewel-encrusted throne. “Go,” she said. “I’ll just enjoy myself on this beautiful lakeside vacation.”

I grinned at her. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” I said.

“What?” she said. “Befriend all the rats and teach them about government?”

“Exactly,” I said, before slipping out the door.

I tried hard not to think about exactly what I was stepping in. I’d grown accustomed to being barefoot, but it was extra rough after seeing the state of the lodge.

As I thought, Ax hadn’t gone to Tobias at all. He was standing in front of a tree, a hearty-looking forest pansy redbud. I knew that tree, because we had one in front of our elementary school. It was in full bloom right now, brilliant and violet. It looked like a tree from a fantasy land that got lost in California, an impossible sort of tree. Rachel and I used to play in it after school, pretending like we were two magical princesses that ran away from our kingdoms. We imagined that a witch cast a spell on a song and made it into that tree. I could understand why Ax would feel drawn to it.

I approached Ax slowly. I knew he could see me, but I didn’t want to bombard him. He turned his body to face me with his main eyes.

“Hi,” I said, smiling.

<Cassie,> said Ax, nodding at me.

I cupped the forest pansy’s leaves with my hand. “There’s a lot of trees like this in Santa Barbara,” I said. “But they typically have to be planted. You’ll see them in rich people’s yards, sometimes, or public places.”

<I see,> said Ax simply.

I stepped backwards and stood with him for a minute, trying not to make it obvious I was combing through him for hints about his body language. Finally, I just came out with it. “Are you okay, Ax?”

A stalk eye fell on me, then looked away. <No, but I do not wish to speak of it.>

I took a deep breath. In anyone else, that sort of answer meant they really _did_ want to talk. Sometimes, people felt like they needed someone else to draw their emotions out, so they would drop a ton of hints and wait for you to pick up on them. Tobias was like that. Jake, too, a little, but he would mostly be upfront when he needed to chat. Rachel was the same. Marco? He would never drop hints about anything. You had to know him to know when he was hiding his feelings, and the code wasn’t nearly as hard to crack as he thought. Once you figured it out, he just resented you. I should know.

I was aware of all of this, because we all came from roughly the same culture. We all were given the same instructions on how to handle our emotions, and we all made our choices based off of that unspoken rule set. Was it different for Ax? In Andalite culture, did you typically admit to being emotionally compromised, but expect no comfort in return? Was this a common response, or an uncommon response? What was comfort like for an Andalite? Rachel liked eating junk food and doing manicures, typical sleepover stuff. I don’t think Ax would like that. Jake liked having something to do, like menial tasks around the barn. Tobias just wanted to be listened to, and feel loved. Marco was almost harder to figure out than Ax, but that was specifically because he refused to admit to even himself he needed healing, and not because he came from an entirely different planet. What would Ax want?

Hesitantly, I walked forward and lightly put a hand on Ax’s shoulder. He was watching a lot of TV lately, he’d know that that meant comfort. Right?

Immediately, Ax jerked away from me. He then jumped backwards in a precise arc, twisting his whole large body to face me in the blink of an eye. <Do not,> he said, and this time I knew the emotions I felt from him were not imagined. Anger radiated from him like heat. I stepped backwards in surprise and, admittedly, fear.

“I’m sorry,” I said, holding my hands out in front of him as if to prove they were under my control.

Ax looked at me with just one stalk eye. <I see Marco in the distance,> he said coldly. <It is your turn to annoy the campsite.>

I nodded and left, only barely acknowledging Marco as he told me all about somehow seeing one of Jake’s uncle’s junk.

“Uncle Barry was _packing,_ ” he said. “Tell me, Cassie — does it run in the family?”

I glared at Marco. He rolled his eyes and walked away, muttering about me not taking a joke. I didn’t care. I was definitely not in the mood for him.

Ax needed something, and I knew what to do to find it out.

 

—

 

We were able to save Tom. It went extremely well, considering the circumstances. Best case scenarios all around. We were all glad for it. Once the business with Tom was concluded and we were home, I started planning.

I had to make sure I had all my bases covered. Rachel was, as always, willing to help me out. I don’t know where I’d be without that girl. Actually, I probably wouldn’t be an Animorph, so there’s that. But honestly? A life without Rachel might a much worse fate.

I told my parents there was this big lock-in event for Rachel’s gymnastics troupe, and that Rachel wanted me to go with her as moral support. Of course, they didn’t mind. As always, I was their good kid Cassie. If I wanted to go somewhere over a weekend, they would let me. I never gave them any reason to doubt my intentions.

Rachel and I made a big show of packing and leaving together. We even had Naomi come pick us up but, of course, Naomi was just going to take me to Rachel’s place. My mom made like she was going to go over details with Naomi, but just then, one of the cages in the clinic randomly opened by way of a certain red-tailed hawk we know. Rachel and I didn’t exactly tell Tobias the whole story, but he pretty much helps out Rachel with whatever she wants.

As soon as we were at Rachel’s, I was morphing osprey.

Rachel watched me warily. “You know I support you,” she said, “But there’s something inside of me that’s, I don’t know. A little bit hesitant for your sake.”

My mouth thrust forward and became a beak. <Rachel, now, don’t be scared, but I think you’re experiencing an emotion called ‘worried’,> I said.

Rachel laughed. “Yeah, maybe. I don’t like it.” She leaned toward me, completely unphased by all the changes happening in my body. “But this is really reckless, even for me. It’s not too late to back out.”

<It’s not that reckless,> I said. <We’ve done it before.>

“Yeah, but we were together, and we had a really good reason. Cassie, If anything happens to you —”

<It won’t,> I said calmly. <It went okay, except for what happened with Jake. But that was awhile ago. We’re better at this now.>

Rachel hesitated, then nodded. “Okay,” she said slowly. “If you really want to do this, then I’ve got your back.”

<If any Animorphs stuff happens this weekend —>

“Then you’re off visiting your sister,” said Rachel, smiling gently.

<Okay,> I said.

“Okay,” said Rachel.

And then that was it. Off I went, flying toward the Santa Barbara airport.

This wasn’t like when we went to San Francisco. That was a direct flight, with no good break for morphing. There were no planes going directly from Santa Barbara to Las Vegas, but there _were_ flights to LA, which is a really disturbing waste of resources. I try not to dream about what would happen if we won the war, because it’s all too vague, too impossible, but I do keep a little mental list of all the things I want to change if I ever can. Flying from Santa Barbara to LA is definitely on that list now. Oprah can just take a bus like the rest of us!

It worked out for my purposes today, though. We’re better at navigating as flies these days, and I had no problems finding the correct gate thanks to a few rotted hamburgers. We landed, and I demorphed in a supply closet. I remorphed, got into the new plane, and then found myself in Las Vegas. It was simple, honestly. After what happened with the _yamphut_ , I’ve become really proud of my ability to stay calm on my own. I mean, it’s never _me_ that starts shoving food in my mouth when I should be focused, or jumps into a zoo pit and acquires a crocodile all willy nilly, or loses control of my instincts and tries to eat Ax. I won’t say who, but some of us cause problems on missions more than others.

I demorphed and morphed again behind a dumpster. I made a mental note to go to a pigeon rescue sometime soon and acquire one. Seagulls were the pigeons of Santa Barbara, but they definitely weren’t around Las Vegas much. This was pure city creature territory. I knew the likelihood of a controller spotting me and thinking twice about an osprey was small, but it was enough to freak me out. I went to Aftran’s condo as fast as I could.

Neither Aftran or Delia were in their apartment, so I ended up morphing a roach on the roof of the apartment building and crawling down through her window. Not only did that take _forever_ _,_ but it was also the sixth morph I’d done in a row. I was beyond exhausted. I helped myself to a blanket and caught a nap on Aftran’s couch.

I woke up to her violently shaking me, saying my name over and over. Her hair was down save for an intricate braid at the top of her head, which was laced through with a silver thread. She wore big, beautiful butterfly earrings that cast dancing reflective lights against the wall. I sat up, totally out of it, and blinked at her. I was so tired, it hadn’t really occurred to me just how terrifying my sleeping body on her couch would be.

Aftran put her hands on my upper arms. “What’s wrong?” she asked, her dark eyes full of worry.

“Oh, um,” I said, gently removing her hands from my shoulders. “I just wanted to ask you some stuff.”

Aftran stepped backwards and blinked. “That you couldn’t ask over the phone?”

“Of course not!” I said. “You never know what people can hear on the phone.”

“You do if your roommate is a Chee,” said Aftran dryly.

My mouth hung open for a minute. I clamped it shut. “Oh,” I said. “I guess I could have just asked Erek for a secure line.”

“You could have,” said Aftran, flopping down next to me on the couch. She glanced over at me, then adjusted the blanket over my shoulders. I smiled at her gratefully. She knew I got cold easily, especially in heavy air conditioning. Of course, she would know. She’d been inside me in a way no one else ever would.

“How the hell did you get here?” asked Aftran, and I told her. Her eyes went wide and she got really angry. She yelled at me, using words she definitely didn’t learn from me or Karen. I guess I deserved it, especially after realizing I could have used a phone. I bore it well. She was right, of course. It’s not fair to myself or to the team to do a lot of risky morphing, just to talk to Aftran. But I’d done it, and I was here.

She got up to make us some tea, clicking her tongue about my recklessness the entire time. She came back with two piping hot mugs. She gave me mine. It was a beautiful design, black with a swirling minimalist outline of a butterfly.

I didn’t say anything about all the butterfly things she was collecting. I’d been buying a ton of butterfly stuff, too. I smiled at my mug, and took a sip. “Wow,” I said. “Normally tea just sort of tastes like bitter water to me, but this is really good!”

“It’s chamomile. I put in a little cream and lavender syrup,” said Aftran.

I cocked my head at her. “That’s pretty fancy,” I said.

“Not really,” she sighed. “It’s easy to do. So, you had something to ask me?”

I looked down at my tea. There was still a teabag in there, floating at the top, like a cloud in a cream and tan sky. This was the hard part, the part I wasn’t entirely sure was okay. No, I knew it wasn’t okay, but of all the not-okay things I’ve done in the name of making everything else okay in the end, this wasn’t the worst. “I’m worried about Ax,” I said, slowly.

“The Andalite?” asked Aftran, blinking.

I nodded. “Yeah,” I said. “I know he doesn’t really like you much —”

“That’s an understatement,” said Aftran dryly. “Can’t say the feeling isn’t mutual.”

“Even after you infested him?” I asked.

“It’s possible to understand someone and still resent them,” said Aftran. “He’s a better Andalite than some, but he’s still an Andalite.” She focused her galaxy eyes on me, drawing my gaze into hers. “Be careful with him.”

I wanted to ask her what she meant, but I knew that crossed a line. A different line, a line that went way further than the line I wanted to cross. I just nodded. I loved Ax, but I’d never forget how easily he sold us out to Captain Samilin, just like he’d never forget how easily I gave myself over to a Yeerk. Aftran was right. It was possible to resent someone a little, but still love them at the end of the day.

I sipped my tea. “I don’t know... If you’ll think this is okay,” I said. “I mean, I don’t really think it’s okay. But Ax, he’s so — he’s so lonely, you know? He has to bear all of this, without knowing anyone of his own kind. I mean, he has Tobias, but Tobias isn’t exactly good with emotions and stuff.”

“What are you getting at?” asked Aftran.

I took a deep breath. “I need to know what to give Ax when he’s feeling lost. I tried to touch him and he just flipped out and I don’t know why. I want to help anchor him, help him feel like people are listening, and like they care. I don’t know where to begin with any of that, because he’s an alien. You know? I’ve figured out some stuff, and talked to Tobias about some more things, but he’s so cagey about his needs. I don’t think he wants to be. I think, on some level, he just feels like he deserves to not have comfort like the rest of us. Look, I don’t want to know his deepest, darkest secrets. Not at all. If you saw anything like that, don’t tell me. I just want to know how people in his culture deal with sadness, you know? I want to be there for him in a way he can recognize. That’s all.”

Aftran was silent for a long, long time. I knew it was the sort of silence I shouldn’t disrupt. I waited, warming my hands with the tea mug. She shifted in her seat, and looked right at me.

“I’m not comfortable with saying too much,” she said. “What happened with Ax was out of necessity, and I know intimately that he’d rather die than go through it again. His secrets are not for me to spill. Besides, I was very, very careful to not peek at them. I went in to find where the Tria gland was located and that was it. I wanted to discover absolutely nothing else about him. That’s pretty much impossible; you know that, especially if you don’t know _exactly_  where to look. So, yeah, I got some stuff out of him that I didn't want. I did get a few fleeting images of what he misses from his homeworld. Those memories were really strong, and I had to get behind them to find information about the Tria. Cassie, much of what he misses you can’t give him. You just can’t. You aren’t an Andalite.”

I nodded, and sipped the tea. I hoped it hid my face. I was disappointed, to say the least.

“I will tell you,” she said slowly, as if she were unsure, “That he’s sad you don’t invite him over anymore.”

My eyes widened, and I set down my tea mug. “He is?” I asked.

“I won’t really go into details, but if you want to do something for him? Invite him in for more dinners. That’s all”

I lurched forward, as if I was confronting Ax rather than Aftran. “It’s nothing to do with disliking him or anything! He came over as Jake once, but only because my parents didn’t know Ax’s human form yet. Later, I had him come over in his own morph, so my parents could get to know him and Jake didn’t get blamed for any of Ax’s, you know. Quirks. I said Ax was a study partner. He’s not, it was a total cover up, and dad could tell.”

Aftran started to smile. I pushed at her, just a little. She was definitely laughing at me a little. This wasn’t the sort of story we shared when I was her host, but she knew me enough to guess the ending anyway.

“My dad made fun of me so much and kept calling Ax my boyfriend. I mean, he’s bad about Jake, but Ax as a human is way more attractive than Jake in the objective sense. Um, not that I notice too much. And not that I don’t think Jake is attractive! But I have eyes, you know. Jake’s good looking in a sturdy way. Like, Jake has a warm smile that makes me go all melty, and he’s so strong, even stronger than he looks. Ax could, like. Model for Cover Girl, or be on TV. So dad was _way_ weirder about him.” I felt myself growing hot. I grabbed my tea mug from the table, then I hit my face behind it. Aftran laughed and pushed my hands down.

“Keep bringing Ax around, anyway. He’d appreciate it. He doesn’t get a lot of chances to practice his human form outside of public spaces, which can really overwhelm him. It could be good for him, and you.”

I nodded, and sipped more tea. It was halfway done. I looked down at the mug. “Um,” I said, “I’m covered for the whole weekend. Would it be okay if I stayed here for the night? Before going back? It was a lot of work.”

Aftran looked at me, trying her best to be disapproving, but there was a twinkle in her eye. “You know damn well Delia’s going to drive you back.”

“I would never assume —” I started, but Aftran put a finger to my lips.

“Yes you would. You also got covered for a weekend, not just one night, because you knew we’d let you stay.”

“I just wanted to keep my options open,” I said, but she was smiling and so was I.

“It’s okay,” she said. “I wanted to see you, too.”

 

—

 

Being with Aftran was nice. Nicer than I expected. I knew I missed her, in moments both small and large, but I hadn’t truly allowed myself to feel the weight of it. I missed her with the depths of the ocean and the expanse of space. I missed her dry, Yeerkish wit and her deep galaxy eyes. I missed the way she made me feel most of all. Like I knew things, like all the feelings inside of me were right and just, that I wasn’t always ‘moral Cassie’ who was silly with her ideals. I risked my life countless times in missions and in battles, but Aftran had been the biggest risk of them all, and I had been right to take it. I was out of my mind at the time, feverish with the nothing inside me, but I had been right. Aftran reminded me of the things inside that I like, the good things like hope and conviction. Aftran made me feel like a Cassie before the war. With her, I was never a wolf with a blood stained muzzle. I was a human. A simple, good hearted human who had believed.

We sipped flower tea in butterfly mugs and watched bad movies on cable. We held hands, chaste and simple. Our matching skin made our fingers melt into each other, two sky puzzle pieces locking together with the same blue hue. Aftran’s hand was longer, more elegant, and she had a shimmering purple manicure, but otherwise our touching skin made us as one.

I fell asleep with my head on her shoulder.

 

—

 

The next Tuesday, I told dad that my old study partner, Phillip, was going to come over to help with some math homework. Ax showed up right on time. He took one look at my dad, took a deep breath, and said “Hello, Walter, who is Cassie’s father. I am not here to romance your daughter. Terrr. I am homosexual. This means I only kiss only other human men. This is shameful in your so-ci-et-tyyyyy.”

My dad blinked.

I shrugged at him, hiding a grin. “He just came out. He’s proud.”

“I am very proud-duh,” said Ax.

My dad looked at both of us and sighed heavily. “Ooooooohkay,” he said. “Leave the door open anyway, Cassie.”


	4. Chapter 4

Me, the human me, the boy inside kept screaming tell her, tell her!

But the hawk … the hawk suffered dumb, helpless. The hawk had no way out. The me that was a bird, the body, the physical me didn’t know that there was a cause for the pain.

Didn’t know it could make the pain end. And already, for the hawk, the pain had become a fact of life. Reality.

Life was hunger. Life was killing. Life was danger. Life was pain.

The hawk could manage it. Not on a conscious level, of course, but by shutting down. Keeping alive on a sort of primitive autopilot. Only essential parts of the organism were maintained. No contemplation. No decision. Not even observation. Just survival.

The boy Tobias screamed.

The hawk Tobias had already begun to accept the pain.

\- Tobias, Animorphs #33, The Illusion

 

I kept having Ax over every week or so. My dad thought he was the greatest kid he’d ever met. My mom wasn’t so pleased, but I taught Ax how to slow down, and how to talk to her. Mom came around in the end. Honestly, “Phillip’s” earnest naivety could win anyone over with time.

Even if they were getting used to him, I still hoped that, one day, they would learn that “Phillip” was an alien. In a perfect world, it’d be because we won, and we lived on a peaceful Earth, and I was alive to tell them everything. As always, that was just too big to think about.

Ax never wanted to impose, and always waited for me to invite him. He never simply appeared at my front door unannounced. That’s why, when it happened, I knew something was very wrong.

Dad came to get me in my room. I was at my desk, working on math, and was somewhere between zoned out and full on sleeping. I felt his hand on my shoulder, and it made me jump almost six feet in the air.

“Sorry, sorry,” he said. “Uh. Phillip’s here?”

I frowned. “He is?”

“Sure is,” said my dad. I glanced at the clock. 9:34 PM. A little late for a house call. “Hey, uh, he seems pretty messed up. Look, if something is wrong, just tell us, alright? We won’t make Phillip feel bad or anything. We’ll have to tell someone, but it doesn’t have to be his host family if that’s not safe. Just talk to us.”

“No, no, I don’t think anything is wrong with Phillip,” I said, almost mumbling. I ran down the stairs, taking them two at at time.

He was disheveled. He’d gotten really good at wearing clothes, but his pants were on backwards, and he’d missed a few buttons on his flannel. I wasn’t sure if Tobias hadn’t given him a final check, or if Ax simply didn’t care at the moment. One look at his eyes, and I had a feeling it was some mixture of both.

A week ago, we all asked Tobias to walk willingly into hell. Taylor had tortured him, ripped him apart in both body and mind. He hadn’t talked about it, and he seemed to be coping, but I wasn’t sure if he’d recovered. Ax wasn’t either. I knew, instinctively, that this was about him.

“What’s up?” I asked Ax.

“Let us speak privately,” said Ax, his voice low. He flicked his gaze toward my dad. “There is a serious matter involving a mutual friend.”

Dad looked surprised. In spite of his appearance, this was the most put together Ax had been in a while. I put a hand on my dad’s shoulder. “We’ll talk,” I whispered to him, as confident as I could. I wasn’t exactly sure what kind of lie I was going to spin, but I knew something would come. It always did. These days, the lying had become the least of my problems.

I walked outside with Ax. He kept looking up at the sky, then losing his balance and grabbing onto me. It was a little shocking. Touch was so, so taboo with him, and even in human morph he rarely got close to any of us. I didn’t say anything. He would have felt insecure.

Finally, we were far enough away that we could talk. “What’s up?” I asked, my voice quiet and hushed.

“Tobias is …,” Ax said, trailing off. He stopped walking and looked up at the sky again. “Ah,” he said, and then pointed.

I followed his gaze. I saw Tobias, flying, seemingly carefree. Perhaps it was a bit late for him to be out — he normally had to be tucked into his tree around nightfall, before the night predators came out and were threatened by him, but otherwise he seemed fine. I shot Ax a look.

He met my gaze evenly. “I have been trying to speak to him for for nearly three of your hours. He has not responded.”

I frowned. Tobias could definitely be passive-aggressive, but if he were mad at Ax, he wouldn’t just shut down. I looked around me, double checking for my father, and then I morphed away my mouth. It was a pretty specific and difficult trick, but I could do it well after practicing in my bedroom a lot. I knew I’d find myself in some situation where I’d need thought-speak, stat, so I learned how.

Ax’s eyes widened in surprise, and he brought a hand to his mouth. I would have smiled if my mouth wasn’t, you know, missing. Widening of the eyes is an involuntary human response to surprise, but a shocked hand at the mouth was something Ax had picked up from soap operas. His human body language responses were becoming more and more automatic every day.

<Tobias?> I asked, directing my thought-speak at the hawk. Nothing. No response. I turned to Ax. <You’re sure it’s him?> I asked. <Maybe it’s just some other red-tail. Let’s call Rachel.>

Ax shook his head. <It is him,> said Ax, evidently switching to thought-speak because I was using it. <We were watching the television drama Law And Order, when he suddenly screeched, as if he were hunting. I startled, and he flew around the scoop in loops until he found the opening, much like a, uh, “real” bird.>

<Oh,> I said, softly. I morphed my mouth back, and immediately swallowed. My returned mouth was itchy, and dry. I stared up at Tobias.

I didn’t have a lot of information about his time in Taylor’s box. He’d reported back to us, just enough, just enough for us to know what it was and be wary of it. Jake hadn’t asked any further questions, and Marco quickly relieved the tension with bravado and jokes, because the darkness of the situation flipped him into comedian mode. All we knew was that the Yeerks had a box that would make you feel alternating pain and joy, signaled by red and blue lights, and if we ever saw it we would abort the mission no matter what.

Tobias had told Rachel a little bit more. Not everything, but enough. She, in turn, told me. It was too much for even Rachel to bear alone, knowing exactly what we had all agreed to let happen to Tobias. Because of her, I knew that Tobias had used the hawk instincts to survive the pain. We had been in my room when she talked to me, both sitting on my bed and leaning against the wall.

“He talks about ‘the hawk’ and ‘the human’ like they are two different things,” she said, speaking in the slow way she used when she was trying not to cry. “Like ‘the human’ is some mild inconvenience, and ‘the hawk’ is the thing that’s much more important.”

“He takes pride in being a hawk,” I told her, my voice gentle and soft. I’d explained this to her so many times before. “It makes him feel useful and strong.”

She had shook her head. “No,” she said. “It’s worse now.”

I put an arm around her shoulder, and pulled her toward me. “We’ll all figure it out when the fighting is over. Right?” I said.

“Yeah,” said Rachel. “When the fighting is over.” When she said that, she sounded sad.

At the time, I was more concerned with how upset the idea of peace made her. Now, I see that I should have listened to her about Tobias.

<Please come back,> Ax said in thought-speak to both Tobias and myself. Just like he projected his anger back in the cabin, I felt Ax project his fear and worry and concern, his emotions leaking out everywhere. I shut my eyes, as if I could shut out the situation. I opened them again.

Tobias was still in the sky, aimlessly flying at night, lost and feral.

I took Ax’s hand in mine, my heart beating. This time, I knew, instinctively, that the touch was okay. I squeezed it. He squeezed back.

“Let’s both watch him tonight,” I said softly. “I think he’s just — retreating, for a while, to his hawk side. And, um, don’t watch any more police dramas with him. Anything with lots of flashing red and blue lights in an enclosed space. If it happens as a surprise, pause the TV, or turn it off for a second, or just distract him. Give him time to orient himself. Don’t tell him why, because he’ll think you’re treating him like a baby. Maybe pretend you stepped on the remote or something.”

Ax looked at me, then nodded, slowly. <Back on homeworld, we have war games. We do not have speakers like you do, as we find external sound nearly always obnoxious. However, there is a way to broadcast war game knowledge to the entire scoop, used to invite others to the game, or to simply brag. It is a sort of — of emotional fanfare. A feeling of pride of patriotism. My mother told me never, ever to do that, all for the sake of my father and Elfangor. I believe, now, that I truly understand.>

I smiled ruefully. “My father was listening to a song that used a theremin. That’s an instrument that humans use a lot in our science fiction.”

<I am aware,> said Ax.

“It was the day after a battle, a bad one. It didn’t sound like dracon beams, not really, but something about it started to really get to me. I think it’s because I associate the noise with fake aliens, so I started to panic and cry, because I have to fight real ones and my dad has no idea. I had to leave the house, and I couldn’t explain to my parents why.” I looked back up at the sky, watching Tobias. “I think it’s going to be worse for Tobias, for a while.” _Maybe forever_ _,_ I added, silently.

Ax and I stood for a long, long time, holding hands, feeding each other comfort and strength. It’s what I wanted, I guess, a mere month ago when I spoke to Aftran about Ax’s memory. I felt a strange sort of pride that Ax had turned to me in this moment, and then I felt an immediate wash of guilt for feeling proud at all. This was not a situation for celebration.

I remembered myself so long ago, desperate and sick with fighting, and I remembered giving into the caterpillar's instincts. It was good. It was simple. It was, in some ways, preferable to my warped thoughts and broken mind.

I wondered what I should do for Tobias, but I knew, like I knew how to breathe and knew how to make my own heart beat, that Tobias was far beyond my ability to help.

I squeezed Ax’s hand again. That time, it was for me.

 

—

 

The next day, I went to Erek’s, and I called Aftran. She was right. It was a lot easier to just phone her.

Erek said we could talk as long as we wanted. What were long-distance charges to a Chee? We took full advantage. We spoke, of everything and nothing, like Rachel and I used to when we were kids. My neck ached from holding the phone to my shoulder and my cheeks hurt from smiling. The pain was sort of good, like dull, aching reminders of way life was supposed to have been and could be again, maybe, one day.

In time, we wound down to more serious matters.

“What’s it like, being a _nothlit_ _?_ ” I asked. “I only ever morph for two hours. I deal with having this second mind inside of me, just for a short time, and then it’s gone. If it was there all the time, I might, I don’t know, start to struggle with it?”

Aftran was silent for a moment. Then, she said, “Well, I think it’s pretty different for a Yeerk.”

“Oh,” I said, blinking a little. “Yeah. I guess it would be.”

“Is something happening with Tobias?” she asked. She knew me too well.

“Sort of,” I said. “I think it has more to do with Tobias than his _nothlit_ state, especially because, frankly, being a hawk has helped him out a lot. It’s just that I don’t think being a hawk is helping him anymore.”

“I could see that,” she said, quietly.

“Is it all still. You know,” I said, struggling to find the right wording. “Going okay? Being a human full-time?”

“It’s complicated,” said Aftran, speaking slowly, like she was carefully sorting through her words. “I miss my siblings in the pool, but it’s good. It’s like having a host, but the host doesn’t care about much. The host only jumps at loud noises, and wants to stay inside when it’s raining.”

“Good,” I said. “Good. I knew it was a hard decision.”

Aftran gave a bitter sort of laugh. “Decision isn’t really the right word.”

“I did all I could,” I said, somewhat defensive.

“You did,” she said softly. “The Empire was the force that backed me against a wall, not you guys.”

We were silent for a moment, each thinking our own thoughts with the comfort of each other’s presence, even if it was only through the phone.

“Cassie?” said Aftran finally. “You still there?”

“I am,” I said.

“Me? I liked the pool well enough, especially after I gave up Karen and lived there full time. Others? Not so much. Others were host hungry. God, this would be a really good solution. For a lot of us. Making more Yeerks like me. _Nothlits_ , happy to move into a new body that was made just for them and is theirs and theirs alone.”

“It would be,” I said, quietly.

“One day, maybe, do you think it’d be possible? To let the Yeerks who want it _nothlit_  into something that fits better?”

“Yes,” I said, firm and final. “We’ll make it happen. You, and me.”


	5. Chapter 5

Jake. Cassie. Tobias. Even Marco and Ax. Helping to protect their innocence. Letting them see themselves as the good guys.

It was a symbiotic relationship. Or co-dependent, whatever.

They needed me to be the bad guy.

And I needed them to be the good guys.

See, if they were good guys, and I was on their team, then that automatically made me a good guy, too. Even if I was different.

At least that’s what I’d been telling myself.

Of course, it wasn’t quite that simple.

\- Rachel, #48, The Return

 

The day after what happened with David, I asked Rachel to come to the barn. Alone. Jake and I spent time in there together, because Jake liked the work. Rachel and I hadn’t been in the barn alone since we were kids. We used to play in there, and pretend all the animals were our friends. Sometimes one of us would ask the animals questions, and the other would answer in a  silly voice. The jokes weren’t really that funny and the voices weren’t that good, but we were children. Real children, small children, children untouched by responsibility and war. Back then, everything was funny. Everything was easy.

As soon as Rachel was in the barn, she started crying.

I rushed to her, and guided her to a place where we could sit together. I held her close, as close as I could, knowing how long it had been since she let herself cry.

When she felt stable, as stable as she could get, I said, “It’s okay.”

Rachel took a shaking breath, ragged from sobbing, and she looked down at her hands. “I —” she started, then broke down again.

I had seen Rachel in so many of her small moments. I remembered, vividly, the first time I saw her cry. Naomi and Dan had thrust their kids on Jean and Steve again, something they did a lot when they were fighting and didn’t want the kids to hear. Rachel was sick of it, so she snuck away and took a bus to my house without telling anyone. It took the Berensons a while to figure out where Rachel had gone. When Rachel heard Naomi and Dan were coming to pick her up, she broke down.

We were ten, and it seemed like Rachel was feeling the saddest thing anyone could ever feel. I remember grabbing her and holding her, all while pushing back my own tears, just like now. It’s hard to watch anyone cry, especially Rachel, and it made me want to cry. I didn’t. Just like now. I remember hearing the doorbell ring, and my parents stepping out to talk to Naomi and Dan. Rachel didn’t get any punishment, and got to stay with me for the whole weekend. Back then, nothing was better than two sleepovers in a row.

I never thought I’d see Rachel that childlike, that distraught, ever again. I was wrong. I was so wrong. This time, I don’t think two sleepovers was going to fix it.

Still, I did what I could. I held her as tightly as I could. Rachel wasn’t normally a touchy-feely kind of a girl, but she needed it now. She melted into my embrace, and all her weight pushed against me like lead. “What happened with David,” I asked, quietly.

A sob caught in her throat. She remained pressed against me, her face looking at something beyond my shoulder. “He asked me to kill him,” she said.

My blood turned to stone. Cold, rough, jagged stone. “Did you?” I asked, keeping my tone as even and measured as I could.

What we had done to David was not mercy. I knew that, now. I think I knew it even then, but I could not allow intentional human blood spilled on any of our hands.

Rachel pushed herself away from me. She looked at me with a red splotched face. We make fun of Rachel for being obnoxiously perfect and clean in nearly every situation, but that did not hold true when she was crying. Rachel turned ugly when she cried. Her eyes turned to seaweed and her face got soft and bloated, pock marked like cottage cheese. She sniffed, and she took a shaky breath.

“I looked at him, and I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know — I didn’t know what choice made me a good guy, a hero. I couldn’t figure it out. So I thought about what he did. God, Cassie, I thought about what he did. To Aunt Ellen and Uncle George, to that poor hawk he thought was Tobias, to Marco when he acquired him and made him that much more paranoid, I thought about all of that, how close we all came to losing just because he wouldn’t listen, and Cassie? Oh, god, Cassie.”

I made myself look at her. I studied her blood-filled skin, and the tears that were smeared upon it. I felt heavy as a statue. I felt filled with pebbles.

She opened her mouth, then closed it, then looked at me with eyes that pleaded. “In that moment, I wanted nothing more than to kill him slowly.”

She choked, and I reached out and put my hand on her shoulder. I squeezed it, because I knew I should. She jerked away from me.

“No. I don’t deserve that. I looked at him, this — actual rat, an actual rat, a tiny little body made of cartilage and garbage, a body that started the plague, a body that disgusts on sight, and I thought that it wasn’t torture _enough_. I wanted to tear his tail off with my nails. I wanted to squeeze him in my fists, slowly crushing him more and more, just until he gave up. Then, I would let him go, and then do it again. I had plans. I wanted to throw him against a wall, over and over, and watch his blood splatter like paint. He deserves the worst, then more, and then he deserves hell.”

“Rachel,” I whispered with my numb stone-mouth, “What did you end up doing?”

She collapsed again, folding in on herself, crying and wailing. I didn’t move. I didn’t reach out to touch her. Was it because I knew she didn’t want me to, or was it because I couldn’t?

I suddenly knew, with a fullness and entirety, that I never wanted to know what Rachel did. Maybe three years ago, before everything got this bad, I would have shouldered her burden, but I couldn’t anymore. There was too much on my soul already, and whatever she had done with David was going to be the weight that broke me.

It was my plan. It was my idea. I let it happen, and I let Rachel and Ax listen to him beg and scream while I went home to my parents. When it came down to it, when the fog cleared and we all looked at what we had really done, my plan had been far crueler than death. I knew it the moment I couldn’t allow it to happen with Aftran.

Maybe Rachel killed David, swift and painless. Maybe she gave into her darkest urges and tortured him. Maybe she put him back on his island. Whatever the outcome, it was no peace to me. Rachel sat in front of me, shattered and broken, and I found that I was silently crying. We mourned David, the boy who was forced into our war and who could never belong. I was lost. I was so, so lost.

When I looked at Rachel, I realized something, something deep and true. Rachel was not just lost.

Rachel was gone.

Rachel would never return to what she was before the war. Rachel was something different now, and she would never, ever go back. She had sealed her fate with a white-furred, pink-nosed rat.

I still cried, but it was out of habit. Like Marco, I was somewhere beyond crying, now.

“I still love you,” I said. I said it to the old Rachel, the Rachel who carried a pink Sleeping Beauty lunchbox, the Rachel who stole makeup from her mother and didn’t care when she was lectured. I missed that Rachel. I missed her so fiercely.

She nodded, and she said “I love you too.”

We held each other, and we mourned each other.

 

—-

 

That night, wild and uncaring, I flew to Aftran. I called my parents, giving them some lame excuse that they bought, because they always bought it, because I was such a good kid. Then I morphed, and I flew.

It was an insane distance, an impossible distance, but the strain of it was something I needed. I needed to flap my wings endlessly against the dead night air. I needed to push myself further and further and further. An owl doesn’t go all that fast when it’s not diving. I flew from sunset to sunrise, stopping to morph when necessary. I knew exactly when I was reaching the two hours point, because two hours was forever ingrained in me. I couldn’t do any one task without jerking with terror as I neared the two hour mark, like I could get trapped helping dad in the barn, or trapped in a movie theater. Letting two hours pass without thought was just another thing I would never have again.

I tapped my beak on Aftran’s window. It was suspicious and stupid, but I didn’t care. I was past caring. She was sleeping, but she woke up quickly. She opened the window, her eyes wide. I demorphed as quickly as I could, even if I had morphed so much that my fresh muscles were immediately exhausted.

I stood in front of Aftran, swaying just slightly. “Tell me I’m good,” I said hoarsely.

“You’re good,” she said, too shocked to do anything but parrot me.

I shook my head. “No,” I said. “ _Tell_  me.”

She blinked, then took a deep breath. “You’re good, Cassie. You’re really, really fucking _good_ \- uh, pardon my French. Look, your goodness  _changed_  me. Before, I was something unthinking, doing what I was told because I felt I had to, connecting with others through an Empire that doesn’t stand for me or for my people. Then I met you, and you gave up everything you knew for me. You looked deep in yourself, and you saw you had the strength for sacrifice.”

“I didn’t,” I said hoarsely. “I was so, so depressed. Part of me was happy to let go and just be insect instincts and simplicity.”

Aftran shook her head and stepped toward me. She put a hand on my shoulder and I felt on fire. “Don’t,” she said, firm and steady. “It wasn’t weak. It was breathless bravery, and you know it. Look at you. You morphed back, and you kept fighting, and that made me fight, too. Hell, I even —”

She cut herself off. I knew she was about to say she was still fighting. I always knew she’d find a way back to her people, back to the Peace Movement, back to inspiring and changing. It was beyond risky for the Animorphs, especially after all I’d done to keep her in a form around other sentient beings, and I didn’t care. I loved her all the more for it.

I stepped forward and pressed my lips to hers. She went stiff, and then she melted into me.

It wasn’t like kissing Jake. Kissing, for Jake, was a ritual. It was a rite and a prayer. For Aftran, it was play.

She was clearly more experienced than Jake and I. Much, much more experienced. She was definitely having a nice time in Las Vegas. She rested one hand behind my head and gently bit my lower lip, sending shivers up and down my body. This was not Jake and I awkwardly exploring, poking out our tongues because we saw in movies that kissing needed tongues. This was a woman who knew what she wanted, and she wanted me.

I separated from her and slid the sleeves of my morphing leotard down. She took me in with a small little smile. I bit my lip, feeling exposed and silly and young. Aftran wasn’t all that older than me, both in Yeerk maturity and her human body, but she could absorb knowledge and life from all her hosts so quickly that she felt expansive. She stepped toward me, and I felt a sense of relief. She hadn’t rejected me. She had accepted me.

Aftran knew my breasts always got a little sensitive smashed up inside my morphing outfit, and when Aftran smoothed her thumbs over my nipples, I felt fireworks. She knew me. She gave me exactly what I needed. Her fingers danced over my skin, finding all my sensitive places, because she knew. She was quiet and soft, listening to me, studying me, like she could hear my thoughts all over again. It wasn’t connecting like we used to but it was something else, something new, something wonderful.

She soothed my worn muscles and quieted my loud heart. She healed me that night, with her perfect french braid and plum-painted fingers. I still felt empty and raw, and I was still mourning the loss of my friends, my fellow soldiers, all lost to paranoia, loneliness, inhumanity, and violence. She could shoulder my mourning. She was patient and kind and she _knew me._

When we were done, she held me and let me cry. It had been a long time since I cried in front of someone and received strength in return. I am not shy about crying, but it doesn’t help to let the other Animorphs see me at my weakest. They need me to be something strong and unmoving. They thought me weak, but if they actually saw my small moments, they wouldn’t know what to do.

She whispered to me that night, telling me all of my favorite stories, reminding me of all my favorite things. She couldn’t remember everything from being in my head, and she hadn’t been inside me like that for over a year, but it was more than enough comfort all the same.

I suppose I should feel guilty. I was Jake’s girlfriend, after all. If he knew, he’d be really upset, like, _really_ upset, but it was hard for me to see it as a negative. I know my mom still cares for ex-husband, and mom visits him in Ohio a few times a year. My dad doesn’t mind. They had been married for nearly a decade, after all, and they loved each other even if marriage hadn’t been the best fit. Mom had moved the family to California help open up The Gardens, and her husband and my sister missed Ohio too much, on top of a lot of other relationship problems. They said goodbye, but not for forever. My mom met my dad, and he understood completely. They got married and it was a better fit. I learned when I was ten, and walked in on my mom and Richard kissing. We’re not a family who lies, so they explained everything to me. They made me swear to not tell anyone else, which was the only thing child-me thought was weird.

As I grew up and watched more TV and movies, I started to think that _other_  people were the wrong ones. Everyone who is in love should just _be in love_ _._ Life would be a lot simpler that way. For a while, I wanted to tell Marco and Rachel about my mom and Richard, but then Marco called her a psycho one too many times and it was over.

I didn’t care about the girl thing, either. I understood that about myself, and it didn’t bother me. Naomi had left Dan because she was gay. When I learned about that, I remember thinking “Oh, that’s a thing? I like girls, too, but I still want to marry a prince.” It all made complete sense to me. Naomi’s sexuality was another secret I was told to keep. There are so, so many people aren’t straight and married; it’s so common, yet no one is allowed to talk about it. It’s all so silly.

I doubted Jake’s parents had secret romances. Jake’s parents were the sort of people that made my parents and Naomi keep secrets. They were straight, successful, happy, and perfect. I knew Jake would have a hard time understanding me. I also knew that our relationship was a product of the war. More and more, he looked at me like I was a prize. He’d stopped touching me when we kissed, and he talked about saving our first time for after the war constantly. Jake was losing a sense of who I was as a person, and seeing me as a symbol. It was disturbing. It was scary.

It didn’t matter. Tonight, I was in Las Vegas. Tonight, I was in Aftran’s arms, our matching skin pressing against her butterfly patterned quilt.

I slept without dreaming. These days, I never sleep without dreaming.


	6. Chapter 6

Tom turned. Lifted his arm. Aimed his weapon. “I’ll kill you, Jake,” he said, voice ragged. “I will.”

Jake snarled. Crouched. Prepared to spring.

That’s when I shot forward and closed my jaws over Jake’s uninjured back leg. Clamped down.

Jake roared. Turned on me. Smacked at my head with his paw. The blow sent me sprawling. Claws raked deep gashes in my side.

But it was worth it.

The pain, everything.

I’d done what I had to do.

I’d made the sacrifice.

Tom disappeared into the night.

Jake and I lay there, panting with pain and fatigue.

We had nothing to show for this fight. Except that we were alive to fight another day.

And tomorrow, Jake could face himself in the mirror.

\- Cassie, Animorphs #52, The Sacrifice

  
  


I remembered being the caterpillar. Those memories were not solid. There’s not much to being a caterpillar. It exists to become a butterfly. When it is a butterfly, it drinks sweet nectar. Then, it dies. Sometimes because it is old, and it is it’s time. Sometimes, its because the insect got devoured, as is the fate with so many creatures in the wild. If they are anything, the memories were impressions. Impressions of movement, of satisfying myself with the nutrients in a leaf. 

In this moment, watching Jake demorph, I fantasized about dying as the caterpillar. The caterpillar wouldn’t have known what was happening. The caterpillar barely even knew it had become a butterfly.

I felt so sure, so right in my decision just a minute ago. Now, as I looked at Jake’s human face, I regretted everything.

What had I done?

When David was against us — one boy, just one boy — he had twisted all our minds. Every insect was a threat. Every bird was a sharp-taloned weapon. All of us had been changed, permanently, by just that one boy.

Now, the whole Yeerk army had the morphing cube, and it was my fault.

I did it to save Jake. I did it to save Jake. I did it —

Jake had been so, so hollow since we moved to the Hork-Bajir Valley without his parents and Tom. His eyes were like the bottom of an empty glass, once full, now sticky with leftover sugars. I thought no one could spark emotion in him, but apparently I was wrong. I could. He had plenty of emotions now.

He was disgusted. Not like Rachel used to be disgusted, rolling her eyes at my overalls or faded flannels. Real disgust, true disgust. Instinctive disgust, the sort of knee-jerk disgust felt when confronted with rapists or cannibalism. He looked at me like I was subhuman, like I was something writhing and wrong. He looked at me like I was an oozing wound, filled with foaming puss and smelling of rot. He looked at me like I was smeared feces on a bathroom wall, spelling out an angry word. I had never been looked at like that before, and I don’t think many people have. 

Not everyone gets to hand over a powerful weapon to an intergalactic army while directly disobeying their general boyfriend.

I swallowed, my throat feeling dry. “They don’t know where we are,” I said, knowing how dead the words were, how empty and lame it was to explain myself when I’d done what I’d done. “We still have that advantage.”

Jake said nothing.

“They’ll never be as good at morphing as us,” I said. “Not with Visser Three in charge. He’ll just want everyone in battle morphs. They won’t use fly, or trout, or eel.”

Jake said nothing.

“The Peace Movement is alive. When those Yeerks see the morphing cube, maybe it could inspire —”

“Don’t,” said Jake.

I pressed my lips together, but then I opened my mouth all over again. I needed to talk, I need to explain.

“Jake, if you killed Tom, you would —”

“Don’t,” Jake repeated, and his voice was even lower and quieter than before. I took in a deep, shuddering breath. 

“I love you,” I said, and it felt like saying it to Rachel all over again. I love you, in present tense, but it wasn’t. I love you, I loved you.

Jake looked me up and down, like he were studying me, checking me over for lies. “I won’t tell anyone about this,” he said finally, his tone low and flat. “Because otherwise they will turn on you, and I need my team intact.”

I felt stung. I felt wrung through and used. I nodded.

“Okay,” I said.

He turned and started morphing owl. I waited for him to finish and leave before I followed him, separate and alone.

 

\---

  
  


“Look, Cassie, when this is over I’ll be done with it forever. I’ll go back to school, get an education, go to basketball games, get a driver’s license, go to college, figure out what it is I really want to do. And be with you. You and me.”

She forced a smile. “A year after it ends, if it ends, if we win, a year afterward if you want to be with me, we’ll talk about that again, okay?”

“I have to wait a year? Kind of harsh, isn’t it?”

“Hey, if we get married, Marco isn’t going to live with us, is he?” Cassie said, trying her best to jolly us both out of our dark moods.

It didn’t work.

For the first time I could taste the faint possibility of actual victory, despite the probable Andalite betrayal. The Taxxons might be joining us! For so long I’d fought with no hope at all.

I should be excited.

I should be happy.

\- Jake, Animorphs #53, The Answer

 

The anaconda display was filled to the brim with rocks and tree trunks, some man made, some real. There were lots of little hiding places for the snake, little holes and tunnels. There was plantlife, big, giant imported leaves that felt like fabric. There used to be a small pool in the anaconda display, allowing the snake to cool down if it wanted. The water flow had been turned off to conserve power, and the pool was murky and dirty. Rather than turn and leave the display cage, Jake and walked down to the pool, standing at it like he could find life in the puddle.

The only thing that remained from the Gardens I knew was the chirpy, nondescript piano music that pumped through still working speakers. It all felt like it was written twenty years ago by someone who was only half paying attention to what they were doing. It pierced through the thick glass of the anaconda display, forcing its way through, distorted but determined to be heard all the same. 

I touched my left ring finger, pinching the place an engagement ring would be if I had gotten one. I swallowed.

All of us had been emptied, both inside and out. I was the skinniest I’ve ever been in my life and guess what? I didn’t like it after all. I looked like someone took a spoon to me, and ate all of the best parts first. So did Jake. His morphing suit hung loose and deflated against him. That’s how we learned we could morph looser clothing. None of our original morphing suits fit right anymore.

Slowly, I followed him to the puddle. I watched my feet as I walked, pausing between each step. Eventually, I was by his side. I put a hand on his shoulder, feeling his collar bone underneath his shirt. He turned and looked at me. Just his head at first, then his whole body. 

He looked sad. He looked vacant, blank. He looked tired. He looked how all of us looked, sixteen and a veteran soldier of a hopeless war. Only I knew, I  _ knew,  _ that when I thought of Aftran in Las Vegas, living it up, happy as a clam yet still fighting with the Peace Movement, I got a spark in my eyes. The same spark I saw when Marco watched his mom and dad touch. That spark appeared when Tobias sat with Loren, as close to comfortable in his skin as he’s ever been, staring at Rachel off in the distance.

The spark that Rachel had when she thought of more battles and more war.

Jake looked at me, and there was nothing. He drank in the gaze of his wannabe-betrothed with the same expression he had when he spoke of tactics, or asked if we still had cans of tomato paste for chili. It was the look of the automated soldier he’d been since Tom took his parents.

I grabbed his hands. My right in his left, his right in my left. I squeezed them, searching his eyes, hoping.

Nothing.

He leaned into me first. I was surprised, and then I wasn’t. For so, so long, I’d been some symbol of happiness to him. When things were right, he could have me, stripped of clothes and in the fullness of my being. I was a reward, and always had been. He used to want to save me for later, for after we had won, when he was a brother and a son in a normal, Yeerk free family. When the war was over, he would marry me, and he would peel off my clothing, piece by piece, and receive the prize that was inside.

Now that he felt nothing, he was looking at me like I could give him something. Like maybe, if he opened me up now, he could find some joy and some meaning.

It wouldn’t work. I knew it wouldn’t work. But it would make him feel better, just for a few minutes. Maybe it would make me feel better, too.

I deepened his kiss, and then guided us out of the anaconda display. Once we were safely away from the snake, I took off my shirt. He did the same. The tinny, too cheerful music kept pumping through the walls, a persistent piece of past that wouldn’t let go.

Jake wasn’t confident like Aftran, but I had learned from what she taught me. I guided Jake at times, but mostly I let him lead. This was for him, not for me. I had already felt some small healing. This was his turn.

I was his conclusion, his epilogue, and for tonight, he could have me.

In the end, when he held me, naked and sweat-sheened, I saw no spark in his eyes.

We morphed, and we flew back to the Valley.

We had made him the leader and now he was, maybe, the most ruined of us all.


	7. Chapter 7

“I’m still pretty good in a fight,” I said. He laughed.

“Pretty good? Cassie, you’re a one-woman army. But you’re the soldier who has fought her war and moved on. That’s good. It’s not me, though. Come on, Cassie, we both know this is a lifeline for me.”

I brushed away a tear. I didn’t know how I felt. Relieved? Rejected?

…

A few minutes later, after watching Jake morph and fly away, I climbed up to where Ronnie waited.    
I knew I had said good-bye to Jake forever.

\- Cassie, Animorphs #54, The Beginning

  
  


I stepped toward the podium, and stood strong amidst camera flashes that went off like fireflies. I looked down at my notes, then I looked up at the camera. I didn’t smile. I didn’t think I should smile, not really. I would get backlash for smiling in the face of such strife. Of course, I would also get backlash for not smiling. I never could win. The first year after the war, no one said anything bad about us. After the world calmed down, the negative comments began. Marco and I could handle it, but Jake always got crushed. I guess in some ways, it was good he’d become a recluse. Less opportunities for media outrage that way.

I closed my eyes, and I saw a mental picture of Jake’s face when I told him we were over. It was just a month after the war. We were all staying in yet another fancy hotel, and had been given rooms that were too large and too decorated to feel comfortable. Jake sat at a chic-sleek desk, his hunched and defeated body framed by lush cherry curtains and bright blue walls. His face showed no expression while I gave him my rehearsed speech. He’d reacted with nothing more than a slight parting of his lips. He said “Okay,” and then he left the room.

I opened my eyes again and looked out at the audience. The camera flashes were still going wild. I knew the video cameras had started rolling.

A production assistant motioned for me to start. I was taking too long to begin my speech. That was fine. Let them know I had to collect myself.

Let them know I was mourning.

 

\---

 

I spoke to Ronnie on the phone after the press conference. It was nice to hear his voice. Ronnie had this amazing strength to him, something strong and calming and unwavering that very few people possessed. Jake had had it, once, but he had lost it. Sometimes I think we all sapped it from him, us Animorphs, drinking his fortitude like mosquitos drinking blood. Sometimes I think he lost it himself the day he gave up on Tom. I think it was a mix of both.

I don’t normally think of Jake this often. Our relationship was much, much more than teenaged puppy love, but that didn’t change how young we were, or how long ago it had happened. I loved him in my way, and would always love him in my way, but it was clear he would never keep up with the future I wanted for myself.

Ronnie had some of the same qualities that drew me to Jake, but he was entirely different. He was driven and passionate in a way Jake never would have been, even without the war twisting his personality. Ronnie and I believed in making things happen, no matter how impossible the goal. We were both called naive and idealistic, but never by one another.

Ronnie calmed me over the phone. He told me all the things I wanted to hear, and reminded me that the mission to rescue Prince Aximili was no more impossible than six child warriors quietly saving the world in the simple town of Santa Barbara, California. He was right, but I didn’t remind him that we six came out five.

Whenever men interrupt me, or try to explain my own job to me, I think of Rachel. I think of how amazing Rachel would look in my tailored suits and kitten heels, and I imagine that she’s standing behind me. It makes me draw myself up taller, and deal with all the bullcrap the male bureaucrats put me through with a ferocious sort of grace. Her ghost was with me, always, and I didn’t want or need any other ghosts to keep her company.

I told Ronnie I wasn’t coming home that night. He understood. Ronnie was my partner, my mirror and my rock, but he hadn’t been there for the war. He’d been in prestigious New York boarding schools, learning about government and law, because politics were a foregone conclusion for a Chambers. My childhood was something he could never understand. He knew about Anna Tran, and he knew why I needed her. He didn’t mind.

I had my driver take me to the airport, and I jumped on a plane to Las Vegas. I didn’t call her beforehand. She kept tabs on all my public appearances, and this story was  _ big _ . She would know I was coming.

I arrived at her place somewhere short of midnight. Her condo’s doorman knew me, and let me in the building without question. I knocked on her door, not bothering to call her and announce myself.

The door opened almost immediately. She pulled me in and held me as soon as the door shut behind us.

“You did everything you could,” she said softly, tangling her fingers in my hair.

“I tried,” I said, staining her shoulder with tears.


End file.
